Russia: Just like the USSR, but without those pesky Communists

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/02/africa/russia.php

 

Just think if American TV networks took that approach with Bush.

CNN would be reduced to showing reruns of Princess Di's Royal Wedding.

 

I've seen a lot about this lately--Russia is rapidly returning to every bit the autocratic state it was in the Soviet Era. The only differences are: now they favor capitalist over socialist ideals; mafia thugs/oligarchs who've bought off the govt are now the society's royalty above the corrupt bureaucrat class that used to rule; and they're now more interested in selling their weapons for a profit than using them to invade other countries.

But it's all the same shit in terms of consolidating power in a few, stifling dissent, and crushing individual rights and liberties. That's how it was during the Czarist era, that's how it was during the Soviet era, and that's how it's fast becoming during the capitalist era.

 

But the St. Petersburg subway stations look like palaces.

And stealing on the internet is legal.

There is actually one anti-government newspaper allowed to publish . . . but it goes so far the other way that it has little credibility. And allowing it to exist is basically the government's way of saying "See? We allow dissent."

 

Read this book: http://www.amazon.com/Russian-Diary-Journalists-Account-Corruption/dp/1400066824. Politkovskaya was killed because she was one of the few people willing to stand up to the government. Her book chronicles numerous atrocities in Russia in the early to mid-00s. Things are much worse over there than most anyone in this country realizes. And she died in 2006 I believe so I'm assuming things are much worse now.

 

Every Sunday, somebody named Jimmy from Brooklyn calls Bill Cunningham to tell him that Communism is alive and well and that the Cold War is still going on. The Soviet Union is playing possum, he says, and Czechoslovakia is still a country.
Jimmy sees Communists everywhere, kind of like the way the kid in The Sixth Sense sees dead people.

 

Frontline, I believe did a great job reporting on this last fall. Even more nerve-rattling was the rise of youth political education camps (I've forgotten the official name), in which participants are taught near-sycophanatical praise of Putin. It's like a return of Stalin or some half-assed Russian Mao.

 

In Soviet Russia, the television censors you.

 

Link to show I mentioned before. If you have time to watch, I highly recommend.

http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/russia703/video/video_index.html